Worlds Collide
by Alliebeth
Summary: "...And that is exactly what happened to Rose Tyler that day, on that lonely grey beach. It broke her."  10th/Rose separation and reunion :
1. Chapter 1

**Worlds Collide**

**Legal mumbo jumbo: I don't own Dr. Who or any of the characters and only write this because I love them and am slightly obsessed **

**I'm a recent Doctor who convert, and to be perfectly honest, I'm pissed about how the 10th/Rose relationship went down. I mean, I get it, from the show's standpoint, but it just doesn't sit well with me. So, this is my take on 10/Rose's separation and reunion. Enjoy!**

"Rose Tyler…" He began in a tone that he only used with her.

She waited longingly for the rest, but it did not come. The image of The Doctor, projected here onto this desolate beach in Norway from across the stars, across universes, didn't fade or sputter in its last moment. No, it simply vanished, as if he had never been standing there in front of her at all.

"Doctor? Doctor!" Rose whirled, searching the horizon for any trace, the tears she had been stifling for the last few minutes now flowing like two giant rivers down her flushed cheeks. The wind tore at her jacket, stung her eyes, and matted her hair, and yet she continued searching. As the reality of what just happened dawned on her, Rose felt her knees give out from underneath her and sank into the grey sand, shaking with uncontrollable sobs.

She heard a familiar voice in her ear. "Rose, sweetie. Rose…come on then, tell us what's happened?" her mother whispered, trying futiley to get her attention.

"Rose? Come on, Rose, your scarin' us!" Mickey Smith's voice tried next, but was equally useless.

It was as if Rose's body and mind had been set on auto-pilot. She could not make herself stop crying, could not make herself move and, frankly, did not see a reason for trying. Imagine shock and pain and grief mixed with an emptiness as large and as hollow as the depths of space all stuffed together in a sack and dropped on you from a great height at a great speed. Except you can't, because that sort of impact is enough to break even the strongest person, even if they knew it was coming. And that is exactly what happened to Rose Tyler that day, on that lonely grey beach. It broke her.

Then, the hysterics suddenly ended. The tears stopped cold, frozen in their ducts. The heavy sobs that threatened to crack her ribs ceased. The world swirled around her, glittering gold before giving way to pitch black as she collapsed on the sand.

A sharp pain that started at the back of her skull and swam down her veins, burning her all the way to her fingertips, came to rest squarely in Rose's chest, pulsating angrily. A powerful scream of pain started in her throat, but emerged only as a faint whimper as it passed through her lips.

Voices drifted in and out, incoherent and fuzzy. Rose was aware of hands on her, pulling her up, moving her from the soft, wet sand and into the van. She ached, as if a bolt of lightning had struck her, but instead of passing through it had decided to bounce around inside her body, perhaps for a bit of excruciating fun. She was freezing and burning all at once, a mixture of discomfort and outright pain. Unable to move, unable to free herself, broken Rose just couldn't fight it. And so she let go, and let herself drift.

"Rose Tyler…" He began, a slight waver in his throat. These words were so simple, and yet so very hard to form.

It wasn't that he didn't _want_ to say them; they had been itching at his brain for a great long while. But things weren't so simple for the Time Lord. He had been alone for so very long. He was alone again, now. Still, something inside him knew that they needed to be said.

Just as the rest of his sentence began to form, she was gone. In the blink of an eye, Rose, the Beach, the Tylers, all gone.

An anger rose up inside The Doctor. He missed his chance. It was gone, finished. She would never know…

She has to know, he screamed at himself inside his mind. She would never _hear_ the words, but surely she _knew?_

His anger gave way to intense sadness, and for once he allowed tears to flow down his cheeks almost as thickly as they were flowing down Rose's at this exact moment, on an untouchable beach in a parallel universe.

Loss was a demon that the Doctor dealt with every day. His family, his friends, his planet, all destroyed. So much lost, never to be regained. But he had begun, after so many centuries, to put it behind him. He had had relationships with companions before, but never as intense, never as strong as with Rose. She did not, could not, ever hope to fix the emptiness where these things used to be. Instead, the love that The Doctor had for Rose, and the love she had for him in return, had pushed out the edges around the emptiness and enveloped the pain in a thick armor of happiness.

But she was gone. He had lost her.

The tears stopped, and The Doctor just stared into space, looking straight through the fantastic supernova he was orbiting. The pain did not dull; he did not expect it to. This new pain was something he would live with. It was the least he could do for her.

As he turned towards the TARDIS's control system, the Doctor saw a flash. Not in the physical sense, but rather within his own mind. For a full second, it blinded him, obscuring the never-ending stream of time that ran through his head. It was bright and hot and cold, and somehow familiar.

And then it was gone.

Hearts racing, The Doctor collapsed onto the TARDIS floor, unsure for the first time in his Time Lord existence.

**Thanks for reading! Please let me know what you think. I should be posting ch. 2 and maybe 3 up soon; I don't want to make them too long!**


	2. Chapter 2: The Things I've Seen

**Worlds Collide**

**Chapter 2: The Things I've Seen**

It's ironic how loud background noise becomes when there's nothing else around to mask it. The low humming of fluorescent lights overhead, the repetitious beeping of monitors and machines, even the spattering of a light rain on a window pain, broken only by the occasional tapping of heeled shoes against the gleaming tiled floors. All can be deafening under the right circumstances. These were the sounds Jackie Tyler heard in and out each passing day, and they made her want to scream.

Pete's wealth had bought the best care for Rose since her breakdown on the beach, but a hospital, however cheerily decorated and friendly-staffed, will start to drive anyone mad after three weeks. All three that had been present that day, Jackie, Pete and Mickey, had refused to leave Rose's side for days after she was admitted, unresponsive, to the London hospital. Pete had to return to work, but he still visited almost every day. Mickey's duties at Torchwood had called him away, but he phoned Jackie for updates as often as he could.

That left Jackie, nearly seven months pregnant, to sit and wait. At first, she had passed the time talking to her unconscious daughter about anything and everything, but that had grown tired. Now, there was just background noise. Nobody wanted to admit it, but hope that Rose would ever come to was fading.

She thought back to when they first brought Rose to the hospital in Norway, immediately after her collapse. Doctor after doctor had poured over her, but the only conclusion they could reach was that she was unconscious, unresponsive, and they had no idea how to snap her out of it.

Now it had been three weeks since transferring her to London, and not a single sign of waking. She was breathing on her own, and wasn't in a coma, but her brain wasn't really active either. All that could be done was to wait and hope.

And so Jackie Tyler wanted to scream. She wanted to yell at her daughter, to tell her to wake up, it couldn't be that bad, she would get over it. But she couldn't. She knew how much The Doctor meant to Rose, so she sat and waited, helplessly watching one life grow as the other dwindled.

Whereas her physical body had felt both fire and ice run through it, Rose's mind only shivered in its own prison.

The representation of her conscious self was barren – a dark space with no walls, and only the tiniest bit of light filtered in from above. She sat huddled with her knees up to her chin, filthy and dressed in rags, trying to shield herself from the voices that haunted her every moment.

"Rose…Rose…" voices of varying pitch called to her, but no one was there.

She gritted her teeth and buried her face in her knees.

"_Go away._" She half-sobbed.

"Let us in, Rose."

"We can fix you, Rose."

"_You're lying._" She muttered "Leave me alone!"

The voices continued their pleas. They scared her, made her shake, but there was no way to stop them, nowhere to go to get away. She was trapped.

Rose's mind used to be bright, beautiful, and creative. Now, it had been reduced to a broken haunting ground. If The Doctor could see her into it now…

"_No…_" She crackled, the thought giving off a mixture of pain and embarrassment. For her Doctor to see her like this would be the ultimate blow. There would be no coming back from that.

"The Doctor…" One of the voices crooned.

"Stay out of my head!"

The other voices joined in a furious chorus. They sounded excited.

"The Doctor!"

"Find the Doctor!"

"Let us in…fix you…the Doctor!"

They shouted at her and Rose threw her hands over her ears.

"Leave me alone, just leave me alone. Leave me be." She whimpered. And then another voice, a familiar, painful voice.

"Rose Tyler….she's gone." It was faraway-sounding, but it was unmistakably him.

"Do you hear that? I'm gone!" She half-laughed through tears of anguish.

"Not gone. Lost, different." The voices replied.

Rose jumped to her feet for the first time, rage boiling inside her.

"Gone, lost, what's it matter? Why don't you just end it already?" She shouted into the darkness. "Put me out of my misery."

"Absolutely not! What would the Doctor think of that idea?"

It was strange; it was his voice, but somehow not.

"The Doctor? The Doctor….doesn't…matter anymore," she choked the words. "I'm trapped in space, and he can't help. I'm on my own." She roared defiantly.

There was a buzzing sound, almost like hundreds of low murmurs converging on one another in an echo-filled room.

"This is not space." A single, low voice replied after a few seconds.

"Well if it's not space, where I am? Where have you taken me?" She shouted in disbelief.

"You have not been taken anywhere, Rose Tyler." The same low voice replied, almost indignantly.

"Bullshit! I'm trapped, and I sure as hell don't remember ever coming here."

"Let us in, and you will be free. You are ready now, Rose Tyler."

"Why d'ya keep repeating my name?" She was clearly annoyed, one of the many emotions she had not felt in what seemed like eons.

"Rose Tyler is who you are. Where you are."

"Hold on. Rose Tyler is _where_ I am?"

"Yes. Let us fix you. Free you. Let us in."

This whole time Rose had assumed she had been trapped in some strange space-related prison. Now, to hear that she was residing inside her own mind was a bit of a shock. But it almost made sense.

"Can't be," She fenced. "My mind isn't this big. This place goes on forever. And it's so dark…."

"We had to protect you. Now it is time." The voices were calm, but there was a slight undertone of excitement.

Rose stood, no longer shaking, weighing her options for a moment.

"Fine. Let's do it, then." She gulped a nasty lump down her throat.

"Clever girl!" The Doctor's faraway voice swirled around her as the voices started buzzing again.

Suddenly, a strong wind started to pummel Rose from all directions. It felt as though she might be pressed in on herself. It wasn't just wind, though. It was a golden wind, glittering, even in the areas where there was no light.

"Wait…I know this…this is…this is…" she stuttered, trying to fully understand what was going on.

The golden wind dipped and swirled, glittered and glowed, swooshing faster and faster around her.

"This is time!"

**Sorry, this chapter is a bit heavy on the psychological…almost past it, though. Thanks for reading**


	3. Chapter 3: Why Didn't I Think of That?

**Worlds Collide: Why Didn't I Think of That**

**Author's note: These events take place right after Runaway Bride, except that Donna stayed with The Doctor. They have been traveling for some time.**

"Doctor…" The worry in Donna Noble's voice escalated as she grabbed onto one of the handrails surrounding the TARDIS mainframe. The Doctor was too busy reading screens and pulling levers to even look up.

"DOCTOR!" She shouted as the TARDIS shook violently.

"Yes, Donna?" He still didn't look up.

"What's happening? Are we crashing? We're crashing, aren't we? Ohhh I knew it. Should have listened to my gut, should have stayed back on Earth, driven myself to the temp agency in the morning…" Donna was more talking to herself than addressing The Doctor at this point.

"Ohhh come now, have a little faith! Everything is under control." The fact that the Doctor was wearing a wide grin meant the opposite of "everything is under control."

"I am going to die in space. I am going to die, in a ruddy _blue box_, in _space_. And it's ALL YOUR FAULT!" She shrieked as the TARDIS gave another thrash. "ARGHH!"

"I don't mean to be rude, but has anyone ever told you that you can be a bit shrill on occasion?"

"My being a 'bit shrill on occasion' is the least of your worries!" Donna took an angry step towards the Doctor, but was launched back against the handrail as the TARDIS seemed to spin out of control.

"I'm afraid, dear Donna, that this time you might be right." The grin disappeared off The Doctor's face, his darkened eyes narrowing. He stared at the monitor for a few seconds, his facial features frozen. Then his eyes turned on Donna.

"What's that look for, then?" She demanded. He continued to look at her, his brow furrowing. His eyes somehow seemed to become even darker than before.

"Oi!"

"I am so, so sorry, Donna." His voice sounded defeated. The Doctor swallowed hard and turned back to the controls.

"Sorry for what exactly?" Donna's voice had been reduced to a whisper, barely audible above the blaring alarms all around her.

The Doctor closed his eyes. This was it. Donna was still screaming at him from across the TARDIS, but this was the end, and there was only one person he could think about.

Rose.

There was another angry jolt, stronger than the rest, that knocked both the Doctor and Donna off their feet and sent them careening across the floor. The TARDIS creaked and, with a great tearing sound….landed.

"We're alive! We've landed!" Donna managed, breathlessly.

"We're alive?" The Doctor patted himself on the shoulders, arms, torso and head. "Haha! We're alive!" The grin flashed across his face once more as he leaped to the control monitor, busily flipping switches and turning knobs.

"We shouldn't be alive, Donna. Oh, no, no, no. We should be dead, blasted into nothingness, disintegrated, vaporized." He began to talk very quickly.

"You promised I'd be safe! And what do you go and do, try to vaporize me!" She complained.

"It wasn't planned!" He retorted.

"Then what, then? What happened? Or…didn't happen, given that we're still breathing."

"The polarities coincided at the very last second! It's remarkable, impossible. Weeelll…improbable. Highly, hugely, impossibly improbable. There's the magic of statistics for you, eh, Donna?" He was beaming at her.

"I've no idea what you're saying, Doctor." She muttered back.

"Right, well, the TARDIS picked up a very large energy signature, bigger than even I could have ever imagined, and we were heading right at it, no hope of breaking free. We'd be turned to dust in an instant once we made contact. Even the TARDIS's shielding would have crumbled away like a biscuit."

Donna's eyes widened. The Doctor sensed her shock and decided to keep talking.

"It was as if two very massive, very energetic bodies were on a total collision course."

"What bodies?" Donna said weakly.

"That's the thing! I've no idea." He smiled back at her, and then his brow furrowed.

"The energy disappeared at the last nanosecond. It was like it was never even there. No collision shockwave, no residual signature, nothing. Zip. Nada." He was back at the monitor, glasses on, tapping away and squinting.

"That's lovely, Doctor. But all I wanna know is _where the hell are we and when can I go HOME?_" Donna bellowed. The Doctor stared at her, blinking, almost in fright.

And then he smiled, his eyes wild.

"We're on Earth." He said incredulously. "Ooohh…I _love_ this planet!"

"Well then, I'm off. See ya. Buh-bye." Donna made for the TARDIS door, but The Doctor dashed in front of her just in time to keep her from opening it.

"Whatcha doin'?" She protested.

"You can't go out. Not until I figure out what happened. There could be all sorts of radiation, it could kill a human." He said solemnly.

"Radiation?" Donna panicked. "But my mum! Grandad!" She tried to push past him.

"Donna, you can't!" He stood his ground.

"Listen, you…you…Doctor. My family is out there, and I don't know who you think you are, but nobody in this universe is going to stop _me_ from getting to _them._"

The Doctor's eyes widened and his mouth dropped open.

"Clever girl!" The Doctor bounded across the room to the controls, working furiously.

"I…..what?" Donna turned, completely puzzled. "I just told you off, though, and this is how you react? Madman, you are, alright."

"That's exactly what happened, though! Ohh….why didn't _I_ think of it?" There was a new fire in The Doctor's eyes, and it both scared and intrigued Donna.

"Think of what?" She forgot about the door and stepped slowly up the walkway towards him.

"The energy, there and then BOOM! Gone. Of course, of course. Improbable, but not impossible!"

"You're doin' that thing again you always do. The 'not making any sense at all' thing." Donna said petulantly.

"Universes collide all the time, there's nothing novel there. Ninety-nine point nine nine nine percent of the time, there's so much energy and so much mass involved that both end up completely destroyed, sending shockwaves of devastation and killing everything in and around them." He began.

"Cheery." She snorted.

"But…that tiny tiny _tiny_ fraction of a percent, which, in all honesty is only just a theory. Well, not anymore, I suppose…"

"Doctor!"

"Yes, yes. Well that tiny chance represents perfection. If both universes are resonating at the same frequency, at the same rate, and their polarities match exactly…"

"_Doctor!"_

"The two universes that just collided were identical in every way. _Every way_, Donna! Do you know how…how, impossible that is? And when I say something is impossible, it _really_ is impossible. I'm a bit of a genius in that respect, calculations and the like…"

"So what you're saying, is that two universes that were completely alike in every way just decided to smash each other one day out of the blue?" Donna asked.

"I don't see why not. Saves a great deal of space, universe consolidation."

"Space saving space? Really?" She eyed him wearily.

"If two things that massive are exactly identical, with the same energy signatures emanating from each one, they're bound to be attracted to one another, and, in this instance, merged perfectly, creating one universe where there once was two. It's genius." He rattled on.

"Yeah, well, where does that leave us, then?" Donna folded her arms across her chest.

He grinned. "Dunno. Let's have a look!" He dashed towards the door.

"But what about the radiation?" Donna screamed after him.

"What radiation?" The Doctor looked quizzical as he opened the TARDIS to the outside world, stepping into the sunlight with Donna following reluctantly behind.

Rose took a deep breath as she approached the shining glass doors of the small shop. They slid open automatically as she came close.

"Nothing to lose, yeah?" She said out loud as she stepped across the threshold and walked up to one of the six counters.

"What can I get for you today, miss?" The woman behind the counter smiled. Her eyes were tinted purple. Rose smiled back.

"Just a cup of tea, please." She swallowed hard. The woman nodded, disappeared for a second, and returned with the order.

"That will be 2 credits, miss. Do you have a customer card?"

"No, I don't." Rose said distractedly as she handed the woman a plastic credit card.

"Would you like one?" The woman swiped it and handed it back.

"No…thanks." Rose took her drink and turned towards the rows of small tables. She scanned for a moment, resting on a window seat occupied by a small balding man.

She looked at her watch. Ten past nine in the morning. She only had six minutes. Her heart began thumping as it always did when she was nervous. Duh-dum, duh-dum, duh-dum, duh-dum.

She ground her teeth.

"Stop that!" she heard automatically in her head. Alright, alright, mum, she thought with a slight twinge.

The little man had begun to move, taking his good time, alright. As soon as he had removed his belongings, Rose walked quickly up and sat down, the bald man staring at her, not two feet away.

"Favorite seat." She explained sheepishly.

"Right…" He gave her an odd look and walked away, looking back two or three times.

Rose held the tea up to her lips and sipped. It was cold.

"Amazing. Most important cup of tea in the world, and you're cold." She half-laughed.

She glanced at her watch again. Nine thirteen. Three minutes. She continued drinking, more quickly now. Soon there was just one small sip left. Again, she looked at the watch, training her eyes on the seconds as they ticked away.

Nine fifteen and thirty seconds…nine fifteen and forty-five seconds…nine fifteen and fifty-five seconds. Keeping one eye on the watch, Rose lifted the cup to her mouth and drank the final bit of the liquid at exactly nine sixteen. It felt dry in her throat.

She closed her eyes, and for a moment, imagined that none of this ever was, ever had to be. She let her mind go back to the days when she was able to travel with her Doctor, side by side, seeing the most wonderful sights the universe had to offer.

"Doctor…" she whispered longingly.

And then something changed. She sat staring out at the dark clouds overhead when she heard a faint "clink, clink, clink". She looked down and saw that, ever so slightly, her teacup was rattling against the table. Her heart jumped.

She looked around, taking stock of the coffee shop. Everything looked the same, smelled the same, _felt_ the same. But somehow, it was different. Different, but the same, all at once. She glanced up at the dark clouds, but, unlike the coffee shop, they _had_ changed. All the clouds had disappeared, giving way to a perfect blue sky, lit by a dazzling sun.

Her heart began racing even more than before, thrashing about in its cage. Rose's eyes welled with tears, but she did not allow them to fall. How silly she would look, sitting alone in a coffee shop, crying in the middle of the morning? She straightened herself up and cleared her throat.

"I did it. I really did it." She whispered to herself.

"But now what do I do?" She chewed on her bottom lip.

"Find him." A voice in her head commanded. She closed her eyes.

"Well, yeah. But _how?_ Where do I even start to look?" She questioned. Realizing she probably looked and sounded extremely unstable to all the people around her, she stood and made for the door.

As soon as Rose stepped out into the sunlight, she knew exactly where to go. She would find him, at last.

"Doctor?" Donna asked, looking out at the sprawling expanse of the city before them. It had changed so much, yet was still unmistakably British.

The Doctor sniffed the air, then tested it in an arc with his sonic screwdriver.

"Everything seems to be…well, just fine, actually." He smiled.

The TARDIS had landed down an alleyway next to what looked like a gigantic shopping center. It must have had fifty floors, all made of what looked like glass.

"That's impractical, ain't it?" Donna chided. The Doctor shrugged. Other things were at the front of his mind. He walked up to what looked like an information terminal and set the screwdriver to work.

"Tyler Industries welcomes you to the city. We hope that you enjoy your stay." A cheery female voice emanated from the speaker. "How may I be of assistance?"

The Doctor was taken aback for only a moment, then asked, "Yes, where are we, exactly?"

"You are currently located at the Great Glass Parlour, Northwest London, United Kingdom." It spouted out helpfully.

The Doctor tilted his head and asked another, more pertinent question:

"Tell me about Tyler Industries."

"Tyler Industries was founded in the year 1990 by Peter Tyler as a manufacturer of various useful products. Following the great Cybermen Conflict, Tyler Industries changed directions and become a forerunner in technological research and design. By the year 2100, Tyler Industries had become the largest manufacturer and supplier of communications technology, biotechnology, and weapons technology in the world. Despite its size, Tyler Industries remains a family company."

"Hold on, 2100 already _happened?_ Doctor, what year is it now?" Donna asked frantically.

He did not answer.

"Oi, info-thing. What year is it?"

"The year is currently intergalactic 3059.5246."

"…what's that in earth standard calendar?" The Doctor asked, his voice too level.

"The year standard earth year is currently 2286."

"2286? Twenty-two eighty-six? Doctor, did you hear that?" Donna's shocked and excited voice sounded.

"It's too late." He muttered, eyes fixed at a faraway point in time and space that didn't exist anymore.

"Too late? Too late for what?"

"She's dead. Long dead." The Doctor straightened himself, but even Donna could see the tears forming in his ancient eyes.

"Who's dead? Who's she?" She inquired gently, touching his arm.

"Rose. Rose Tyler." His face went stone for a long while as memories flashed before him of the short time he had been allowed to spend with her, the woman he…loved.

"You mean, when the universes…?" Donna almost understood but couldn't quite wrap her head around it.

"Her parallel universe collided perfectly with the old one. The place we are right now is her universe and ours." He explained coldly.

"Does that mean you could have seen her again?" Donna let what she was thinking escape into words before she could stop it.

Tears threatened to well over The Doctor's eyelids for a second before he turned abruptly back to the machine.


End file.
